


a colder place

by mstigergun



Series: Inglorious [7]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Trauma, post-haven, someone has bad coping strategies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 08:04:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5409233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mstigergun/pseuds/mstigergun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's cold and quiet and very near hopeless, cradled by the mountains and waiting for the Herald to emerge from the ruins of Haven. And if Leonid tries very, very hard, he can almost believe that everything will be fine. It has to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a colder place

**Author's Note:**

  * For [enviouspride](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enviouspride/gifts).



> Prompted by [enviouspride](http://enviouspride.tumblr.com) for kingcup (youth/dawn/innocence) from [these lovely flower prompts](http://mstigergun.tumblr.com/post/127654570443/flowers-and-prompts). Set shortly after ["In The Dark."](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Inglorious/works/5016895) Title taken from [Low's "Gentle," ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Bt-vZ7OO3w&list=PLOPbR9HxZN10sHSobKcF5GExvf2eANGR_&index=8) although the whole album gives me Leonid-related feelings.

Leonid blinks awake. One moment, the sweet nothingness of dreams; the next, and he realizes just how cold his toes are, how knotted his shoulders are with tension and weariness, like his bones have been bruised by the events of these dark days. He sniffs, rubbing a hand against the numb tip of his nose, staring up at the canvas above him.

He also realizes how badly he needs to piss.

Leonid stares up at the pitched tent, flopping to his back. Next to him, two soldiers snore. Though in their  _own_  bedroll, some man and woman who’ve been talking in hushed whispers of nothing but the  _hopelessness_  and the supposed  _archdemon_  since –

Everything.

A raw sound chafes against the inside of his throat. He swallows it down.

Leonid understands how to keep certain things hidden away. This is one of them.

Instead, he reaches and rubs grit from the corners of his eyes. Scrubs a hand across his face, hard. Tries not to feel the tight, sick feeling in his stomach, as though he’s hard far too much to drink and not enough sleep by half. As though Haven has left him  _hungover_ , though of course –

Of course that’s ridiculous. More likely the foul wine he’d gorged himself on last night, proffered by a vintner who’d spent half his time crying in the cold Frostbacks. Though Leonid’s one to judge. The events of these past few days have left everyone…  _exposed_. Prone to fits of whatever it is they do best, whether that’s crying or praying or patrolling, planning for things that don’t make sense, counting supplies again and again and again.

Leonid’s taken to slipping from bed to bed when he can. It has helped with the crying. The moments of despair so very dark that they feel as though they’ll swallow him whole. The feeling, suddenly, of blood splattered across his cheeks, hot. The air foul with magic and copper and so much  _death_  –

He bites back the sound again, jaw working.

They’ve been in this blighted camp for two days.  _Waiting_.

He knows what people are saying.  _Time to move on_ , though the sentiment is barely more than a whisper. No one could survive having a mountain dropped on them, not even –

Leonid swallows, throat dry.

A piss, he thinks, and some water. Only the night patrol will be up, so no one will have thought to make tea or coffee. Not while it’s this gray, while the inside of his tent is still dark and muffled and quiet, save for the sound of two other people breathing.

Sleep is hard to come by these days, but even the most restless of minds will have turned to oblivion this early in the morning. While they’re embraced by the gray sky above and the sharp mountains around them. The cold earth below.

The Void below, if he’s being honest. And there’s not enough in him to avoid  _that_  sorry fate.

He sniffs again, stomach tight.

Stupid, he thinks, to leave so soon. The Herald will hardly dig himself out from beneath a mountain and be able to wander this far into the blighted mountains. If only they  _lingered_  –

Enough. He rolls to one side, crawling out of his bedroll and hauling on the bits and pieces of his clothes he left scattered to the side. Leonid rifles around for a moment, quiet as he can manage when he can barely see beyond his fingertips. He tugs on his boots and edges out of the tent, ducking past the oiled canvas and into the wilds beyond.

The air is cold enough to send an immediate shiver down his spine, his breath misting the air before his eyes.

It was dim in his tent. Outside, it’s not. The light, spare though it may be, catches each and every patch of white snow, the sky an endless gray expanse above him. He rubs his eyes again, squinting toward the distant horizon, which is pale, sickly.

The colour of death. Of bones left to the elements.

Leonid turns away and heads off toward the edge of their splintered camp. Around him, nothing but silence: even the chill wind has faded, leaving only silence of a place between breaths. A place between decisions.

The sound after desolation.

He nods at the night guard he passes – a woman, whose eyes are shadowed, her shoulders hunched against the cold.  _The dawn will come_ , everyone insists, but what sort of world will the sun rise across?

Leonid puffs out a misty breath into the cold air, picking his way past the distant perimeter of camp. He pisses, staring out at the too-white snow, the darker patches of rocky outcroppings like waves breaking across the mountains. Though if these mountains are waves, surely the Inquisition has been wrecked upon hidden shoals. Coughed ashore here, which is nowhere. Which is –

He finishes up and turns back to camp. On the horizon, the bone-bright dawn has softened to a peony pink, one that diffuses the stark white of the snow to gentler tones. A hopeful colour.

He stops by one of the banked fires and plucks some meltwater from the pot, wetting his throat as he watches the coals.

It’s too early to be up, he knows that much. Too early, and this feeling within his chest is too jagged – far too ugly and brutal for this soft morning, for these quiet dawn hours. Leonid sets down his cup, eyes flicking from tent to tent to tent. He might return to his own to try and wrest a few more hours of sleep from this  _thing_  that woke up, this  _disquiet_ , but –

He doesn’t want to be there, not listening to the intermingled breaths of two lovers, not while Leonid feels  _this_. Not even if he  _did_  trust that somehow the powers-that-be wouldn’t decide to up and leave while he slept late into the morning. Leonid may not be of much importance to the Inquisition, but he’s certainly  _loud_ , and if Cullen and Josephine and Leliana and Cassandra think for  _one_  moment they’ll just pluck the tents up and  _leave_ , well.

Leonid excels at creating a scene. And he’s not above doing it for the Herald’s sake. Quite the opposite, in fact: making a  _spectacle_  of himself, starting spats and sowing doubt on behalf of the Herald, would be the best possible use of his abilities. His skills set to a nobler purpose than ever before.

After all, if they  _wait_  long enough –

He huffs, folding his arms hard across his chest. He’s hardly in top shape to cause a disturbance adequate to disrupt any  _plans_. With enough sleep, maybe, but as he is? Worn and weary and still ragged and raw on the other side of Haven? While he’s as prone to – to get glassy-eyed, his voice tremulous, as to make a  _real_  scene in Ostwick fashion? Hardly.

Leonid shifts his weight, toes still numb inside his boots. The chill here is insistent, licking its way beneath his collar and under his cloak, finding any inch of exposed skin and exploiting it for all its weakness. He blows air into his hands, rubbing them together furiously above the low fire – though of course it gives off little enough heat.

If he could only get  _warm_ , Leonid thinks, scowling at the brightening horizon. If could only be warm and comfortable for a moment or two, he might be able to prepare himself for whatever comes. To make  _sense_  of this in a way beyond the numb delirium of these past few days. To gather himself beyond the –

The choked breaths. The shaking hands. The stupid,  _stupid_  crying.

His throat is tight as he sucks in his next breath, a hardship – like a dagger, sharp enough to taste blood. He needs a moment of fucking  _respite_ , and then he’ll be fine. And he’ll convince those in charge that things are fine and the Herald will be fine and  _everything_  will be fine.

Leonid’s gaze falls on a distant tent.

He sniffs. Puffs a hot breath into his palms again, and sets off.

It’s an easy and familiar path to walk. Of course it is: the moment Leonid learned that Basten had a tent, he insisted on  _exploiting_  that knowledge. Hardly anyone’s managed a tent of their own, though  _naturally_  Basten would be one of the few offered something like a modicum of privacy. He seems to  _ooze_  good fortune and favour. Why, the very moment he’d stormed to Leonid’s side in Haven, it had been as though –

Well, all of it had been wretched still. But Basten was alive, and Leonid was alive, and then everyone  _else_.

Like Leonid’s fucking  _luck charm_.

Perhaps he’ll work this time as well.

Leonid pushes the flap open. “Basten,” he hisses. “Don’t  _kill_  me.”

He might be worried that Basten’s not alone, but –

Well. Leonid  _knows_  he is. He kept enough attention pinned on his companion to notice that much. Besides, after this many days of misery, of long shifts and unending panic, everyone is worn ragged as beggar’s robes. Few enough are like Leonid: hungry in the wake of disaster, left –

Famished. Starving, in fact. Anything to fill the blank emptiness inside. Anything to take the edge off the Void.

Basten is better than that.

The moment Leonid’s head pops in the tent, Basten’s eyes flick open. “I’m not going to  _kill_  you,” he breathes, voice rasped in the dim light of dawn. “But if you keep the tent flap open and let the cold air in, we’ll have  _words_.”

Leonid slips inside, letting the canvas fall shut behind him. He hovers there in the semi-darkness, rendered suddenly –

Uncertain. Unsteady. His stomach as rotten as when his own eyes had blinked open this morning.

He swallows once, throat tight.

Basten huffs out a long breath – easy, gentle. Through the dim light, Leonid can make out the whites of his eyes as he blinks lazily, the shapes of his horns, his pale hair trailing down his neck. He’s broad beneath the blanket, and familiar, would be warm and steady and  _alive_  if Leonid crawled into bed with him.

That he might  _not_  have been, that everything had been so very precarious, balanced on the edge of a fucking  _blade_  while the world fell to ruin about them –

Leonid’s stare flicks downwards to the dark shapes of his own boots. He swallows again. His eyes prickle and he refuses to blink.

Basten shifts in his blankets. Reaches and rubs a hand across his face. “Are you coming to bed?” he asks. Anyone else might sound irritated – to have someone show up in his tent at a Maker-forsaken hour, the sky still gray and hushed outside, and then  _stand_  there like some sort of  _idiot_.

Basten, though, doesn’t sound irritated. Instead, his words are quiet. Easy and unassuming.

Leonid tugs his boots off, wriggles out of his cloak and several layers of his clothing, pausing only once to rub hard at the skin beneath his eyes. A furious gesture that leaves no traces. Then he slips into bed and folds himself hard against Basten’s warm skin.

“It’s  _freezing_ ,” he tries, breathing the words out against Basten’s chest. “And my tentmates  _snore_. When they’re not doing wicked things beneath the blankets.”

Basten makes a sound in his throat, rasped by sleep still. He shifts, tugging Leonid closer. “Sounds like you’re bunking with the people you deserve,” he offers into the skin of Leonid’s temple.

Leonid huffs, his eyes fluttering shut. “And you’ve got the tentmate  _you_  deserve,” as he folds his hand around the shape of Basten’s ribcage, his head finding its familiar resting place against the curve of his shoulder.

For a moment, silence. Then, “What,” murmurs Basten. “No one?”

Like it doesn’t matter, though Leonid hears the sudden clarity in his words, startled from the softness of sleep.

Leonid’s eyes open, a mere squint. He pushes himself up long enough to meet Basten’s look in the dim light of the tent, measuring the shape of his brow, his mouth, the tension in his neck. “No,  _idiot_ ,” he sighs. “ _Me_. Since you’ve been so  _virtuous_. How very lucky you are.” A pause then, perfect silence, then, “Now shut up. It’s too early to be awake and I’ll need all my wits around me when the day begins. Be sure to wake me when you’re up. I’ve a great number of important things to do.”

“Of course you do,” says Basten.

“I’m  _serious_ ,” breathes Leonid. “You need to.”

“Okay.”

And like that, Leonid knows he’ll be fine. He again wriggles his way into his place against Basten’s side, pressing an ear to his chest. He listens carefully for Basten’s heartbeat – steady, certain. Like safety, like a promise. If he listens close enough, he can imagine that some of that same  _certainty_  passes through Basten and right into Leonid.

Basten’s arm tightens around him as he leans in and presses a lingering kiss to Leonid’s forehead. His mouth finds a home against Leonid’s scalp, Basten breathing a soft sound of relief.

It’s enough to make Leonid’s heart ache. To make all the world feel right. Enough for him to feel safe, less likely to crack open across the white snow outside. His fingers curl harder against Basten’s ribcage. His eyes fall shut once more.

Leonid sighs, then, quiet. An unintentional sound, but –

Soft enough for the dawn outside. For the gray morning light, which may yet turn bright. Which may, if he holds out hope, offer something better. Surely, Leonid thinks, this day will be better than the last. Surely, that.


End file.
